Not even close. At about the time of Planet Namek's closing, their maximum on peak days each week was about 33-35,000. Their average was about 23-26,000 daily, with only about 14-19,000 on Tuesdays.omae no kaasan wrote:Being forced to pay extra for a crappy site that eventually got over 100,000 unique accesses a day at its peak. That was great.
Funny how the mind stores away such weird things! ^_^
Memory #1 - Buying Goku Hishouden. In late '99, maybe early 2000, I went over to a pawn shop I regularly visited, and checked out their video games section. I immediately noticed a teal Gameboy Color for $35. I picked it up, checked it over, and then noticed two games on the shelf where it had been. Both were in Japanese, so I wasn't really interested in playing them. One was a fighting game, and one was Goku Hishouden. I decided to buy the Gameboy, which was a good deal at the time, and haggled to get one of the games thrown in with the deal. I distinctly remember holding both, trying to decide which one I wanted. I didn't know much about the fighting game, but I had heard of Dragon Ball, which was becoming popular at the time. It looked like something that might be worth money (I'm a bit of an Arab rug trader...), so I grabbed it and left. In the coming days, I learned to play the game, figuring out which button did what, how to use attacks, etc... I came to a LOT of misconceptions about the story, from thinking that there was an evil version of Goku (the Copy-Goku you fight at the beginning), to thinking that the elimination rounds at the Budoukai was some sort of battle against some evil characters that had appeared for whatever reason. I checked the game up on ebay, it turned out that it was selling for $75, with its sequel fetching even more. I still have it.
Memory #2 - Seeing the Freeza Saga for the first time. After playing the game, I became interested in the show. I bought some fansubs on ebay for about 10 bucks. The first episodes I saw were from the Freeza Saga, starting with Freeza coming upon Vegeta and co. onwards. They were incredible. Piccolo was immediately my favorite from the moment I saw him on his way to help. Vegeta... At first I wasn't sure if he had become good, since he had been a villain in the game. I also misheard some of the names, thinking Piccolo was 'Biccolo' and Vegeta was 'Becheetah' *hides face in embarassment* I remember thinking that it was REALLY weird that Goku was imagining Vegeta in the nude when he saw that vision of support... And when Goku became Super Saiya-jin... I saw that scene long before I knew of the "SSJ Bargain Sales" of later. I had not seen any SSJ pictures, nor any later episodes, so to me, Goku was THE Legend. I had waited through many corny side plots (Ginyu Tokusentai at Kaio's, the Bulma-Ginyu thing, etc...), and waited episode after episode for this climax. The transformation was the greatest of all the scenes I had seen in the series.
Memory #3 - The 'Discovery' period. At this point, I went online and began researching the show, discovering every story, downloading every clip, and devouring everything detail I could find. I read so many bios, episode scripts, interviews... I visited Daizex, Ginga GIRI GIRI (which I grew to hate for its crude, idiotic humor), Planet Namek, Temple 'O Trunks, Ramza's site, Kienzan's Edge, Unrivaled Dragonball Source, DBZ Uncensored, among many others. I visited PN daily for news, read translated manga, and became a part of the most vibrant anime community on the web. I'm becoming super nostalgic at the moment...
Memory #4 - The passionate rage over Funimation. The more I discovered about the series, the more I began to hate Funimation. I'd see the dubs, see the subs, and the difference was night and day. They were so awful... When season 3 came out, all the idiots of the fandom began going on about how wonderful it was, how close it was to the original, how the voices had improved so much, how the the lines were so accurate, the music so perfect, dadda, dadda, da. Better, my fanny. The dubs were worse than ever, and continued on a downward spiral. Whenever we complained, we constantly got told by other 'fans' to be grateful for what we were getting, that without Funi we would never have heard of the series. If I didn't know better, I would've thought that Funi was paying people to say that stuff. Still, there were people who fought the garbage that was being shoved down our throats, and the great sense of unity against a common evil foe was wonderful. Sure, Funi may have won, but we didn't go down without a fight!
Those are my greatest memories.
I remember when Funi released the first bilingual DVDS, the Trunks ones. I went out right away and bought them, even though I didn't even have the DVD player yet!! 
I bought one shortly after and I felt the same way the first time I watched them. Sure I had seen tons of original DBZ by then, but like Prof. Daravon, it had mostly been on badly subtitled fansubs with a terrible picture. My only good quality were my 3 Pioneer movies, ah how I loved them! The DVDs were fantastic, Steve's subtitles were perfection, and Funi even started putting his "-kuns" and "-sans" back in after a while! I remember at the time trying to figure out how Funi had manaed to get such a great translator and not flubbed it up as they did with everything else. But, ya, that was definitely a very satisfying thing for the fans of the original. 
Ya, I find those same hard-cover tapes for sale in the Chinatown area where I live, and they want $10 for them too. Come on, the picture's crap, heh I'll give ya a buck for it and say I'm being more than generous! 
I hated seeing the stupid message he always put on at the beginning of the credits. "This tape is brought to you by S. Baldric Productions...yada, yada, yada..." Stop covering up the picture! Not that it was that great a picture to be covering up to begin with on my 112th generation tape I'm sure. 
Waaah! The things I've been willing to put up with! It's so pathetic! 
